2026/2027 season

Serie A

Team page
Serie A · Team page
Bologna
Head coach: Domenico Tedesco · 4-3-3
Rank
14th
Pts
5
P
7
Form
🟡 Average

The essentials at a glance

The summary of this page: estimated level of play, form trend and qualitative verdict. For the details, head to the other tabs.

Editors' ratings
2/10
Attack
5/10
Defence
3/10
Form
3/10
Confidence / mood
Current risk:High

14th with 5 pts from 7 matches: 1 win, 2 draws, 4 defeats.

6 goals scored, 10 conceded.

Two Inter in the same match against Bologna: Alberto Polverosi's comment

Corriere dello Sport · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

Votes and reviews of the protagonists of the Dall'Ara challenge that has seen the Nerazzurri turn the advantage of the hosts

Tuttosport · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

The judgment on the direction of race of Doveri al Dall'Ara, where the Nerazzurri of Chivu beat 3-1 the Emilians of Palladino: the details

Corriere dello Sport · 18 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

Bologna even won and made Inter uncomfortable, but the Italian champions recovered, had a large 2ª part and won by 1-3, following isolated Serie A leaders.

zerozero · 17 Oct 2026 · machine-translated

How the team has played recently

Match-by-match results, record and rhythm of the current season.

Latest matches
Lvs FC Internazionale Milano (H) · 1-3
Wvs US Lecce (A) · 2-1
Dvs Torino FC (H) · 1-1
Lvs SSC Napoli (A) · 0-1
Dvs US Sassuolo Calcio (H) · 2-2
WDDLLLL
6 scored / 10 conceded over 7 matches played
Rest: 1 day since the last match · 2 matches played in the last 15 days
Home form
0W - 2D - 2L
Away form
1W - 0D - 2L
Statistics

Computed from this season's scores, every time the page is shown.

Goals scored per match
1.2
Goals conceded per match
1.6
At home
4 scored · 6 conceded in 3 matches
Away
2 scored · 2 conceded in 2 matches
Over 2.5 goals
3 of 5
Both teams score
4 of 5
Clean sheets
0 of 5
Failed to score
1 of 5
Cumulative points vs league average

Not enough matchdays recorded yet for this curve — history builds up with every standings refresh.

How Bologna play

System, playing identity, and what sets the team apart at both ends of the pitch.

Playing identity
Preferred system
4-3-3
Philosophy
Play built around the flanks, with two interchangeable forwards used as pivots and forward-sector runs into depth; identity still under construction according to the tactical press.
Attacking strengths
Strong offensive wings (Orsolini, Rowe) and an interchangeable Dovbyk-Piccoli forward duo up front, who arrived via the summer swap with Roma (Santiago Castro going the other way).
Defensive solidity
Back line weakened after the departure of Lucumì, the former defensive leader, to Juventus; the press expects more goals to be conceded away from home.
Pressing
In matchday 2 against Atalanta, Bologna deployed a very high and aggressive press described as a “pressing forsennato” by sport.virgilio.it, with an extremely high defensive line (Heggem cited as an example); the same source's live commentary confirms that “Atalanta ha sofferto molto il pressing avversario,” this pressure having strongly disrupted the opposition's build-up without translating into many clear-cut chances.
Transitions
Bologna are looking for quick exits down the flanks rather than patient possession: against Lazio (matchday 1), Corriere dello Sport notes offensive transitions via Zortea on the right; against Atalanta (matchday 2), sport.virgilio.it describes quick transitions built around Cambiaghi's crosses on the left, Bernardeschi's dropping movements and Ferguson's runs. Tedesco also acknowledged after that match that his side had at times been “abbassati troppo in fase di costruzione” (dropped too deep in build-up), according to tuttomercatoweb.com.
StrengthTargeted offensive recruitment (Dovbyk on loan) and midfield depth with Pobega, Ferguson and Moro.
WeaknessDefence destabilised by the departure of long-standing captain Lucumì; a 0-1 defeat conceded in stoppage time at Bergamo in matchday 2.

The mood around the club, and who is missing

Internal climate, relationship with the supporters, and known absences before the next match.

Mood
Squad confidence
No points after two matchdays and two one-goal defeats, but a club message that refuses to dramatise: on 3 Sep 2026 Claudio Fenucci pointed out that what was seen in Bergamo showed real progress. The dressing room nonetheless has to absorb, in quick succession, Jonathan Rowe's departure, Riccardo Orsolini's injury and Skorupski's error that cost the match against Atalanta. Domenico Tedesco has chosen continuity by keeping the framework beaten in Bergamo and maintaining his faith in his goalkeeper. Hosting Sassuolo on 6 September becomes a moment of truth to get the season going at last.
Coach / players / board relationship
On 3 Sep 2026 Fenucci publicly owned the club's decisions: the sales answer a structural imbalance between €145m of costs and €85m of revenue, not a withdrawal by the ownership, which has invested around €280m since 2014. On the Rowe case, the chief executive explicitly removed any financial dimension from the deal and defended the primacy of the group, which amounts to endorsing Tedesco's decision to leave him out before Atalanta v Bologna. In return, the club points to a promise of continuity: doubled investment in the youth sector and Libra's promotion to the first team.
Mood with the supporters
The Dall'Ara had filled its stands for the opener against Lazio, but two defeats in a row and a summer of heavy sales put the board in the position of explaining rather than celebrating. Fenucci's press conference of 3 Sep 2026, called precisely to set out the logic of the window, the club's financial position and its ambitions, answers that expectation directly. The message to supporters is twofold: the club sells because it must, but it is investing in the academy and in the new stadium project at the Fiera. Hosting Sassuolo on Sunday at 18:00 will measure the tifoseria's real patience.
Pressure on the head coach
Domenico Tedesco continues to be backed publicly by his board, which has taken ownership of the decision to leave Rowe out and presented the start of the season as a finishing problem rather than a project one. His room for manoeuvre has narrowed, however: without Orsolini for at least three matches and El Azzouzi for around four weeks, he has to find attacking solutions with Bernardeschi, Piccoli and Cambiaghi. Keeping Skorupski in goal after his error in Bergamo is a bold call, which exposes him personally in the event of a relapse. A third consecutive defeat would change the nature of the questions asked.
Club objectives
The stated ambition remains a return to Europe, but on 3 Sep 2026 Fenucci set it in an explicit economic frame: reducing the gap between costs and revenue, bringing young players through and unblocking the new stadium project at the Fiera, judged simpler than restructuring the Dall'Ara. The club claims Italy's best transfer balance since 2024, a surplus of around €130m, as proof that the model works. In the short term the objective is more prosaic: finally scoring, and taking their first points against Sassuolo. In the Coppa Italia, Bologna enter at the last-16 stage against the winner of Palermo v Mantova.
Recent internal tensions
The Rowe case is now closed and told bluntly by the board: nervousness noted as early as the pre-season camp, a transfer to Atalanta with no financial purpose, and the promotion of Cambiaghi, judged “better at the moment”. Two areas of friction remain: the goalkeeping hierarchy, with Skorupski kept after a decisive error, and the centre of defence, where Theate is champing at the bit behind the Norwegian pair Heggem-Helland. The question of the armband, left open after Lucumí's departure, has not yet received a public answer. Nothing adversarial is reported between Tedesco and his executives.
Absences
InjuredRiccardo Orsolini — Tear in the left thigh flexors; two to three weeks out in the most favourable scenario, around a month if ligament involvement is confirmed.
InjuredOussama El Azzouzi — Tear in the left biceps femoris, around four weeks out; absent against Sassuolo.

Before kick-off

What to know before the next match: statistical form, qualitative analysis, and a computed estimate of the 1/X/2 probabilities.

Next match

Cagliari — Bologna

AwaySaturday 24 October at 15:00Matchday 8
In 6 days. Kick-off time confirmed by the league. Paris time · football-data.org fixtures.

Prediction, odds and form of both teams →

What the press says

No preview found for this fixture. The press mostly covers the big games, and usually the day before.

Prediction
EstimateCagliari — Bologna
44 %
1 · Cagliari
30 %
X · draw
26 %
2 · Bologna
In-house calculation, from this page's standings data alone: 6 matches played by Cagliari, 7 matches by Bologna. Confidence: medium
The formula, in plain words — with this match's figures
  1. League average. 187 goals scored over 130 team-matches played (20 teams taken into account), i.e. μ = 1.44 goal scored per team per match. This is the reference point: everything that follows is expressed relative to it.
  2. Attacking and defensive strengths. Goals scored (or conceded) per match, divided by μ. 1.00 = exactly average; in defence, above 1.00 means “concedes more than average”.
    TeamGoalsRawKept
    Cagliari — attack6 in 6 matches0.700.85
    Cagliari — defence3 in 6 matches0.350.67
    Bologna — attack6 in 7 matches0.600.78
    Bologna — defence10 in 7 matches0.991.00
    The “Kept” column is the result of shrinkage towards the mean: weight = P / (P + 6), i.e. 0.50 for Cagliari and 0.54 for Bologna. The rest of the weight goes to the league average. This is what stops a lone 5-0 from producing an attack at 3.3 times the average — and hence a 95% probability.
  3. Home advantage (γ). Measured on the league itself: 1.65 goal scored on average by the host against 1.33 by the visitor, over the 52 fixtures present in each team's last 5 matches. Raw ratio 1.24; shrunk towards 1 (weight 0.44, on the log of the ratio) then capped at 1.25 → γ = 1.10. Shrinkage goes towards 1, i.e. no advantage at all: while the sample is small, the model does not assert a home advantage it cannot measure.
  4. Venue correction, specific to each team. Drawn from the home/away split: points per match at the venue concerned are compared to points per match over all fixtures, with stronger shrinkage (weight = P / (P + 8)) and a bound of ±12%.
    Cagliari at home: 1.33 pts/match versus 2.17 overall over 3 matches → ×0.895
    Bologna away: 1.00 pts/match versus 0.71 overall over 3 matches → ×1.109
  5. Expected goals. One side's attack is set against the other's defence. γ applies to the host only: applying it the other way round too would count the home advantage twice.
    λCagliari = 1.44 × 0.85 × 1.00 × 1.10 × 0.895 = 1.20
    λBologna = 1.44 × 0.78 × 0.67 × 1.109 = 0.84
  6. Poisson grid. Probability of every exact score from 0-0 to 8-8, assuming the two goal totals are independent, then adding up the cells: home win 44.3%, draw 29.8%, away win 25.9% — displayed rounded to whole numbers so that they add up to exactly 100. Most likely exact score in the grid: 1-0 (only 15.6%, which says enough about how unpredictable an exact score is).
Limits of this model — they are not anecdotal.
  • It only knows goals and a venue. Neither absences, suspensions, line-ups, fatigue, stakes, weather nor club context enter the calculation — while the other tabs of this page show that they matter.
  • The assumption that the two goal totals are independent is false in reality: it slightly underestimates tight scores, hence the draw.
  • γ is measured over a rolling window (each team's last 5 matches), not over the whole season.
  • The shrinkage constants (6, 60, 8) and the bounds are choices, not measurements. They were tuned to be cautious early in the season; they were not calibrated on a results history, as none is available here.
  • No after-the-fact evaluation has been made: at this stage, nobody knows whether this model is better or worse calibrated than another.
What other sources say
No external source has been collected for this match. That is the normal state: readings are taken by hand, and an empty box is better than an unverified figure.
This block shows probability estimates, not predictions, and carries no advisory value. The in-house estimate is the result of a formula applied to a small sample; the figures from external sources are reproduced as they were collected, without their method having been verified.

The full squad

The professional squad by position, captain marked with an armband.

Goalkeepers
  • Lukasz Skorupski
  • Massimo Pessina
  • Ukko Happonen
Defenders
  • Torjus Heggem
  • Juan Miranda
  • Arthur Theate
  • Martin Vitik
  • Nadir Zortea
  • Emil Holm
  • Frederik Helland
  • Rocco Alhassane
  • Nicolo Casale
  • Lorenzo De Silvestri
Midfielders
  • Lewis Ferguson
  • Jens Odgaard
  • Nikola Moro
  • Tommaso Pobega
  • Mattia Amondarain
  • Oussama El Azzouzi
  • Marco Libra
Forwards
  • Riccardo Orsolini
  • Artem Dovbyk
  • Federico Bernardeschi
  • Roberto Piccoli
  • Nicolo Cambiaghi
  • Jesper Karlsson
  • Jonathan Rowe
This team's current captain could not be confirmed with certainty at the last check — no armband is shown above until the information is reliable.
Squad last verified on 31 Aug 2026 — source: besoccer.com/team/squad/bologna, cross-checked with dazn.com and lottomatica.sport for transfer news; the award of the armband remained undecided according to Il Resto del Carlino (article not accessible, mentioned only as a search result title).

What has been said recently

Chronological feed of verified information about the club.

rss18 Oct 2026
Chivu, screams in the locker room at the interval with Bologna, as with Roma at the Olimpico: and Inter tilts
Source: Corriere dello Sport
rss18 Oct 2026
Moviola Bologna-Inter: there is no rigor on Thuram, but yellow. .
Source: Corriere dello Sport
rss17 Oct 2026
Pobega frightens Inter, then the tris that tilts Bologna and keeps far Lazio and Rome
Source: Tuttosport
rss17 Oct 2026
Inter turns game in Bologna and follows isolated leader
Source: zerozero
rss17 Oct 2026
Serie A: Bologna-Inter 1-3
Source: ANSA Sport
rss17 Oct 2026
Serie A: Inter Milan bounces back in Bologna after slamming in the Champions League
Source: Foot Mercato
Institutional3 Sep 2026
On 3 Sep 2026 chief executive Claudio Fenucci held a press conference at Casteldebole to justify the summer of sales: he put costs at €145m against revenue of €85m and pointed out that the Saputo ownership has invested around €280m since 2014. The sales, he explained, serve to “rebalance the economic situation” without damaging competitiveness.
Source: Tutto Bologna Web
Club3 Sep 2026
On the Jonathan Rowe case, Fenucci was blunt: “The Rowe deal did not have a financial objective,” the player having shown signs of nervousness as early as the pre-season camp. “Certain principles are sacred, the group comes before everything,” he added, before explaining that Cambiaghi “is doing better than him at the moment and deserves to play” on the left of the attack.
Source: Calcio Bologna
Injury3 Sep 2026
On 3 Sep 2026 the club was awaiting the results of Orsolini's scans, after he came off early in Bergamo: first described as a simple left hamstring strain, the injury could involve a ligament, in which case the absence would extend to around a month.
Source: Calcio Bologna
Institutional3 Sep 2026
Since 2024, Bologna have the highest transfer balance in Italy with a surplus of around €130m, ahead of Genoa (around €64m) and Udinese (€56m); the Corriere di Bologna qualifies this by pointing out that some €40m linked to sell-on percentages for Zirkzee and Calafiori must be deducted.
Source: Calcio Bologna
Injury2 Sep 2026
Riccardo Orsolini's left thigh flexor injury is more serious than the first diagnosis suggested: the most optimistic scenario is two to three weeks out, with the winger set to miss Sassuolo, Napoli and Torino, and a return hoped for at Lecce on 11 October.
Source: Fantacalcio.it
Club2 Sep 2026
Domenico Tedesco is expected to keep most of the team beaten in Bergamo: Odgaard, Ferguson and Pobega in midfield, a Bernardeschi-Piccoli-Cambiaghi attack forced by Orsolini's absence, Holm preferred to Zortea on the right and the Norwegian pair Heggem-Helland at centre-back despite Theate's impatience. Wojciech Skorupski is confirmed in goal despite his error against Atalanta.
Source: Calcio Bologna
Club2 Sep 2026
Jonathan Rowe paid tribute to the club after his transfer to Atalanta, thanking Bologna for believing in him “when everyone doubted”.
Source: Calcio Bologna
Club2 Sep 2026
Seeded in the Coppa Italia, Bologna enter directly at the last-16 stage and will face the winner of Palermo v Mantova.
Source: Sky Sport
Transfers1 Sep 2026
Bologna sold around €86m worth of players this summer, with Santiago Castro leaving for Roma for €36m, Jhon Lucumí for Juventus for €20.1m and Giovanni Fabbian for Fiorentina for €13m.
Source: Tuttomercatoweb
Result31 Aug 2026
A second consecutive defeat in Bergamo: despite territorial dominance and several chances for Bernardeschi and Ferguson, Bologna conceded a Samardžić goal in the 95th minute, poorly parried by Skorupski.
Source: Lega Serie A
News last verified on 18 Oct 2026. Sources: sports press (L'Équipe, Le Parisien, Foot Mercato, regional press…) and official club websites — see the link on each item.
Editorial content (playing style, mood, absences, external prediction sources) last verified on 3 Sep 2026. The standings/form data above are refreshed automatically — as is the 1/X/2 estimate, recomputed on every view.